One Week in the Life of a Nobody.

Continuing the theme of 'diaries', one week of my life. (I won't do it regularly, honest!)

Sunday

Harry went home. Harry is a scruffy, very adorable dog, a terrier definitely, whose parents could be Jack Russell, Yorkshire Terrier, Cairn, or similar, take your pick. My wife is a 'dog minder' through a franchise. This entails having dog 'visitors' whilst their owners are on holiday. Great fun in the main and you have the joy of experiencing the idiosyncrasies of various breeds. The last five including Harry have been a Cockapoo (Don't ask), a Staffordshire Terrier, a Miniture Manchester Terrier and a Lhasa Apso. Next weeks visitors are a Whippet and a Bedlingon Terrier.

Monday.

I've started doing reviews for a free paper. It keeps me busy, my wife loves dressing up and 'hob-nobbing! Plus the free tickets are more than welcome. Went to see 'Annie' at the Assembly Rooms. Very impressed, it has a real 'feel good' factor. Su Pollard of Hi-De Hi fame was good but the star was a mere child playing Annie whose singing made an old man almost emotional. 'Almost' as we British men have been taught to keep a stiff upper lip!

A young man squatted in a street, obviously begging but without intimidation as we went on our way to the venue. On our return he was still there. I gave him a little money and we had a brief chat. Jay is twenty six, lives in a squat, his family have disowned him and he obviously has problems. Was I wrong to give him my loose change? I know, I know, he may be telling me 'porkies' but nearly three hours squatting in the same place! That indicates problems are there. 'There but for the grace of God' and all that.

Tuesday, wife dressed up again, another theatre visit in Derby to see Verdict, an Agatha Christie play written in 1958. Not so sure about this one. Full of elderly Agatha Christie fans who hung on every word and nodded knowingly. I too nearly nodded, nodded off I mean. But it livened up second half. It must be me, I'm too young for that sort of stuff. (Peter Byrne of Dixon of Dock Green fame was in the cast and he's eighty three!)

Wednesday

Went to the pub for a change. (not really!) Extraordinarily ordinary except that one thing caught my eye. A family sat nearby, not exactly the creme de la creme. Then again, it's not exactly a posh pub, my local and anyway, who am I to judge, it is the diary of a nobody after all. Although it wasn't that hot 'Father' in the group took off his tee-shirt to reveal only a singlet on top. Why, because he had one hell of a tattoo on his arms and torso. (The funny thing was, exactly what it represented I was not sure. Some descriptive writing would have helped.) But if you're into tattoos, what's the point if you cover them up. The interesting thing was, 'Father' put his tee-shirt back on when they left. I wonder if the family don't have a television at home and watch dad's tattoo instead?

Thursday

The weeks going well. Far too well. The grandchildren, ages nine, seven and two are here for an hour or two. Super children, no angels, all well looked after; well adjusted; well loved. I notice one seems troubled by his hair so I examine it closely. It is shiny and clean, a fact appreciated by all, including the head lice and eggs I encounter. Quick examination reveals the other children have similar visitors. When I was a child after the war it was normal to share everything with your friend at the next desk in school, including both his sandwiches and his nits. In 2011, in a modern, far from bottom end school nothing changes. Our discoveries are commonplace, not the slightest bit unusual, we appear to be going backwards in Britain in the 21st century.

Friday

A 'nothing' day. I spend almost the entire day pottering in the garden. I say 'garden', its really a patio with pots plus a bit of soil round the edges. Not a blade of grass in sight! (My ancient knees are a problem. They're getting on a bit, I've had them since I was a child!) So strenuous gardening is difficult; lots of pots instead. I love it, very English I reckon but I'm far from an expert. Mind you, I'm learning. I buy any bulb that catches my eye (only one eye cos' only one eye works properly, honest!) I plant them, lose the labels or just forget which is which and wait and see what develops. It make gardening much more interesting! At present included are; astilby, nerine, hedichiums and gingers, brugmansia, lycoris, daffodils, tulips and of course musa (banana plants, still indoors which even I can remember).

Not an 'exciting' day but we all need days like that. the sun shone, Spring seems to have arrived. It was a day that suggested it was good to be alive.

Saturday

Football day, Derby County versus Coventry City. My wife and I are season ticket holders and join 25,000 plus people in Pride Park Stadium. My wife, normally very mild and polite shouts continuously at the players and referee throughout the match. It is expensive, we are a poor team, having a poor season but manage to draw 2-2. It wouldn't do for us all, but as the sayings go, 'Whatever turns you on', 'Live and let live' and all that. So endeth the week. My idea of 21st century living. How did your week go? What did you do with your time?

On Peace and Quiet

Many of the general public recognise the saying 'Them that can do, them that can't teach.' There is also the addition, 'Them that can't teach, teach teachers.' There were, and still are, thankfully, many dedicated teachers, especially the younger element, outnumbering the pompous twerps the profession sometimes attracts. 'Twas always the case.

I was late entering a profession that can at times bring out the child in you. (How many wives, and husbands for that matter have rebuked a spouse or partner with the phrase, 'You're not at school now.') You thus have experience of life outside teaching; a slight disadvantage being that you are then not always on the same wave length as those experienced only in academia, academia, academia. (I have met a number of teachers who indignantly claim, 'I haven't only just done teaching you know,' citing six weeks at the local Co-op in the college holiday as evidence of massive industrial experience.)

In my teaching days, long since gone, I was sometimes timetabled to teach drama. Now I had no training in drama and little help via the department. Par for the course I suppose, some teachers protected their little world from other teachers, afraid you might learn their secrets. Perhaps also in case you found out what insecure fools they often were, self opinionated idiots with tiny intellects and massive egos.

I spent many years in various, unimportant may I add, occupations before I joined the 'elite'. Thus some of my lessons tended to be non text book, but the kids seemed to like it. I used to tell the story of the play, (Agatha Christie?) where an individual is dead on stage, within, is it five minutes. And remains there for the duration of the play.Then we, as a lesson 'auditioned' for the play. (No doubt not original, as someone is sure to point out, but who honestly cares.) The children would cavort around the room until, at the sound of a whistle (remember the days we teachers had whistles) the children would collapse on the floor. (No one else on the floor allowed within touching distance). Whether the children were on their backs, stomachs, sides, no matter. A couple of minutes to get comfortable and the fun started. I walked around the room and intently examined the 'corpses'. A twitching eye, a jerky foot, a spasmodic contraction of any body part and you were out. (Any children with inherent 'ticks' were allowed two goes.) You were out if you felt teachers boot or shoe poking gently in the ribs. (Gently, honest! Many had their eyes closed.) With thirty pupils and the majority happily intent on 'winning' it was one hell of a way to spend a lesson, I can tell you. I don't suppose it would be either PC or acceptable nowadays but I'm not going to justify myself to anyone. The children enjoyed it and it was repeated at intervals.

The pupils I taught in the main were lively, not over privileged, exuberant often ill disciplined individuals. Lying still and silent on a school floor did not come naturally to them. Plus the 'winner' was always thrilled to bits and was often not the one you would have expected to be so. Even the concept of a winner would probably be frowned on today. Which led to a second drama lesson, Stevens style. I realised laying, (for never expect kids to do what you won't do yourself,) amongst silent for once, secondary school pupils meant every sound in and around the four storey building could now be heard.

We were next to the canteen, often last lesson before dinner and every clank of crockery reverberated round the large hall in which the pupils lay. This time it was not considered a contest. The pupils merely made themselves comfortable, closed their eyes and listened. What an eye opener for us all, myself included: the sound of the hall clock, the mower on the field, the PE teacher bellowing instructions, also on the field; the French class, chanting parrot style on the fourth floor and the office typewriter clacking away in the general office. Plus the sound of heavier and heavier breathing from an immobile Form Three N. At the end of a lesson pupils were often reluctant to re-enter the noisy real world. Often some feigned sleep but there were instances when a child did really go to sleep, to the amusement and probably envy of his or her fellow pupils. Happy days and I feel we all learnt something, myself included.

This week some unlucky shoppers experienced a three hour noisy, smelly wait to leave a car park in the middle of Derby. Welcome to the real world. I am reminded of my makeshift drama lessons by something I bought before Christmas. But new to this blogging lark, I was advised by an experienced blogger basically 'Not to go on' in a blog! Good advice, my man, here's to the next blog. Hopefully all will be revealed.

It's a Deadly Existence, That's for Sure.

The incident concerning the body stayed in my mind all week. So much so that I could not help but recall the story I included in 'There's Nowt so Strange as Folk', a book of short stories I wrote a couple of years ago. I hope you enjoy it.

“You will get cold feet if you stand about waiting for dead men’s shoes.” Peter Keary

Deadly Serious

There’s no doubt some are born luckier than others. Take Amos Crampton, for instance.
He was born prematurely on Friday the thirteenth, in a small terraced house next to an undertakers in the dead centre of Bury. I suppose you could say Amos hadn’t a chance of happiness. But you would be wrong, dead wrong.
True, he was a sickly baby whom the midwife declared, “Hadn’t a ghost of a chance of survival,” but survive he did.
At death’s door on numerous occasions, he often lay in his battered old pram, shrouded in blankets lest he catch his death of cold. His mother administered to his every need. She was heard to say on many an occasion, “Amos, you’ll be the death of me,” but he survived infancy due to her exceptional dedication.
“Amos, die, over my dead body,” she frequently uttered, “he’s dead gorgeous.” And survive he did.
Amos’s passage through school was, I suppose, unexceptional. Some teachers thought him somewhat dead from the neck up. Any attempts to install in Amos anything more than the educational basics were deemed to be flogging a dead horse.
He would sit, trancelike, gazing out of the window, oblivious to the teacher’s oratory offerings, completely dead to the world.
Attempts at change were resisted. Even the threat, “You’ll finish in a dead end job,” merely elicited the thought so succinctly articulated by the illustrious Robert Louis Stevenson centuries previously. ”It’s better to be a fool than dead.”
Not that Amos had ever heard of Robert Louis Stevenson. Or for that matter George Stephenson, or indeed any other Stevenson with a ‘v’ or Stephenson with a ‘ph’, famous or otherwise who had ever lived.
Amos was far more interested in leisure pursuits outside school. He rode furiously down the hills around the town after school, peddling furiously, on his dilapidated bicycle, brakes defunct, a death trap indeed. He nevertheless happily diced with death itself amidst the early evening traffic. And sometimes at weekends he could be found, at dead of night in Piggin Wood, the eerie solitude enough to scare you to death. Plus discovery by the gamekeeper would have ensured you were a dead duck. But the visits were profitable and he would return home dead-beat with rabbits to supplement the Crampton family pot.
Sick and tired to death of school, Amos was thankful to leave. He obtained a job easily, contrary to school expectations, as an apprentice, cum odd job man at the undertakers next door to his home. His greyish pallor, solemn expression and general demeanour made him particularly suited to work at an undertakers, though he was less than balmy about embalming.
Work amongst bodies and flowers he liked, though his tendency towards hay fever meant him sometimes coughing amidst the coffins, so to speak. But he didn’t mind, remembering that old adage, “It’s not the cough that carries you off, it’s the coffin they carry you off in.” For Amos viewed life with macabre irreverence. It might have seemed a melancholy existence to others, but in a way it was Amos’ idea of ‘living on the edge’, permanently having ‘One foot in the grave’ he used to say whilst adopting his best deadpan expression.
The work was hard at times, a coffin plus body being a dead weight. Amos was dead set on doing well but promotion depended on filling dead men’s shoes. The die was cast, for promotion prospects seemed as dead as a dodo. Nevertheless he enjoyed the work so much that he even volunteered to work Bank Holidays when only a skeleton staff was required. On such an occasion he would turn on the radio for company, singing along to such classics as Jimmy Ruffin’s ‘I’ve Passed This Way Before’, Sammi Smith’s ‘Help Me make It Through The Night’ and of course Billy Fury’s haunting ‘Halfway to Paradise’, though not loud enough to waken the dead of course.
But life for Amos was not all work and no play.
Amos was not adverse to the company of the opposite sex, courting Jessica, who lived opposite the cemetery for many a year. But whereas Amos was thought by some to be dead from the neck up, Jessica was definitely dead from the neck down. Their courting therefore was confined to holding hands in the cemetery, together reading the epitaphs on the tombstones. A dead loss from a romantic point of view. Jessica may well have been a dead ringer for a young Greta Garbo, but her lack of passion signalled the death knell for any truly sexual progress. Of any case, the ties to his mother were too strong, ‘until death us do part’ referring to mother rather than Jessica.
Amos also pursued other leisure interests to varying degrees.
He regularly visited his local public house. A creature of habit, dead set in his ways, he always sat in the same seat, drinking only spirits, with a natural preference for brandy, a stiff drink if there ever was one. And a deadly shot in the darts team, he was always in at the death in any competition offering cash incentives.
He read nature books, becoming somewhat of an expert, particularly on the Death’s Head Hawk Moth and the habitats of the Deadly Nightshade. He also read poetry, being so fond of Tennyson’s ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ that he learnt from memory the entire poem. A huge undertaking, starting of course ‘Into the Valley of Death rode the six hundred.’ And he read novels, Hemingway’s ‘Death in the Afternoon’ being a particular favourite.
He carefully studied the obituaries in the local paper, an interest both personal and professional. Amos worked on the principal, “If you weren’t mentioned, you’d no worries.” Plus any local personages listed could well be a bonus in the very near future.
He visited the theatre, never tiring of Agatha Christie’s ‘Death on the Nile’, the author being on a long list of people he was dying to meet.
Ever the dutiful son, his weekends included visits, in his Sunday best, to the Methodist Chapel round the corner from where he lived. The sermons were often as dry as dust, asking ‘What do we mean by the quick and the dead?’ Plus debating ‘The wages of sin is death’, but Amos did not really mind. It pleased his mother that he attended, and his grandfather, a Sunday School Superintendent would have turned in his grave had he not done so.
In summer he would visit a cousin in Gravesend, conveniently placed for hop picking. An excellent source of extra income in a hot summer, a dead loss when storms persisted. A wet summer signalled the kiss of death to financial gain, though the farmers seemed unaffected by variations in the weather, proving the country aphorism, “You never see a poor farmer or a dead donkey.”
He never made a fortune, did Amos, no gravy train, the undertaking business. He was a proud man, nevertheless. He wouldn’t be seen dead collecting supplementary benefits others thought of as their divine right. He would rather drop dead than accept charity, as he called it. He was at death’s door on several occasions, but always recovered, quoting Mark Twain’s words, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”
Inevitably mother passed to the other side and Amos himself grew old. His increasing deafness meant a world as silent as the grave. And the end, when it did come, came peacefully, over seventy years after it was first expected.
A happy life; a contented life; a long life. Neither morbid nor melancholy, though others might disagree.
On cold wintry nights when the wind whistles round the back street of Bury, one can feel a ghostly presence in the air, smiling down at any poor soul braving the elements. The elderly nod knowingly and hurry home. The young huddle together on the streets, sometimes apprehensive as they imagine hearing a hearse passing by from an undertakers long since gone. And are they a little afraid, a little nervous, these brave young things of a new generation.

“Dead true, they are!”